We do not need to be able to say what “human nature” is in order to be able to say that some training is “against human nature.” - Paul Goodman

Life gets you coming and going. If you sterilize or police the spontaneity of children, it will return as stupidity, gracelessness, and violent crime.

It is desperately hard these days for an average child to grow up to be a man, for our present organized system does not want men. They are not safe.

During childhood, they played games with fierce intensity, giving themselves as sacrifice to the game, for play was the chief business of growth, finding and making themselves in the world. Now when they are too old merely to play, to what shall they give themselves with fierce intensity? They cannot play for recreation, since they have not been used up. … Since each activity is not interesting to begin with, its value does not deepen and it does not bear much repetition. … In these circumstances, the inevitable tendency is to raise the ante of the compulsive useless activity.